Norm (the donkey, not Higgins) shares the Website's home page with a signpost that presents links to a "College Finder Quiz," "Norm's commercial" and an offer to obtain a free "Norm" T-shirt. The quiz determines interests through a personality profile that includes non-sequiturs (Nike or Puma?) along with more serious queries (Large school or small?) to point students toward the colleges and universities in Maine that might best fit them.

Much of it is downright silly – which is precisely why it works, Coleman says. "They may seem more sophisticated today, but deep down they're still scared, young kids," he says. "When you make something fun and entertaining, it is something they can get into. It's a lifestyle and entertainment campaign that makes them comfortable. And when they're comfortable, they're not threatened by the prospect of going to college."

The success of the campaign, of course, depended on the planning team's ability to deliver middle school students to the comfort zone. For that, Coleman used "old media" to steer the potential audience to the new: First, Kick Start bought a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl telecast seen this year in Maine; then the campaign followed up by acting as a prime sponsor of the state high school basketball tournament.

It's similar to the strategy that Lumina and its partners, the American Council on Education and the Advertising Council, are employing in the public service announcements that direct parents and students to the national KnowHow2Go campaign (See Focus story "Nationwide effort urges teens to "KnowHow2GO"). Since its inauguration earlier this year, the $28 million in donated media time in each of the two years the ads are being distributed nationally.

In Maine and nationally, traditional media provide the avenue that directs the intended audience to the primary platform: the Internet. These days, the traditional method of poring over college brochures and then consulting a counselor (however briefly) is considered, well, 20th century. Twenty-first century students head straight for college Websites – and the most effective sites link prospective students to everything from video tours of the campus to KnowHow2GO.org to the common application for admission.

For a student-oriented effort to succeed in 2007, cyberspace is the only way to go, says David Cournoyer, the Lumina program officer who oversees the Foundation's KnowHow2GO initiative.

"Let's be real; kids are text-messaging all day long," Cournoyer explains. "They're talking on their cell phones after school. And with the television on, they instant message, download data, listen to music and text-message and multi-task at night. We have to figure out ways to get the attention of kids with the new media, interact with them, grab their attention with bits and pieces. We need to give them tools for instantaneous feedback and response because that's what they're used to. And if we don't give it to them, we're going to lose them."

Not that the old way of doing things has been abandoned entirely. When VIA began casting for a vehicle to promote Kick Start, John Marshall, an executive producer at a Portland television station who'd long dreamed of hosting a game show for teens, answered the call.

The televised version of Kick Start made its debut last spring. Equal parts Jeopardy!, Survivor and Slime Time Live, the show merges pertinent questions about current events and college life with competitive games that cross the line into outright folly.

In the first broadcast, blindfolded eighth-grade contestants, guided by a sighted partner, navigated go-carts through a rubber-cone obstacle course. Contestants who failed to negotiate were punished with a raw egg broken on the noggin. In another show, teams of eighth-graders in Abraham Lincoln garb were asked to append the Gettysburg Address with bizarre terminology. Contestants who didn't meet the test demonstrated the use of a nettie pot – a sinus-irrigation device that facilitates the excretion of (there's no polite way to put this) snot – to the viewers across southern Maine.

Cameron Woodford, 13, had just finished eighth grade when he visited the set of the Kick Start game show. Now a freshman at Poland Regional High School, Cameron says that college, four years away, seems far in the future – that is, until he remembers details from fifth grade, four years in the past. "That seems like yesterday," he admits. John Marshall is the brains behind the show's concept, its elaborate set, the substantive questions and the off-the-wall competitions. "My goal is to get their attention – and that's tricky to do at this age since they've already seen every trick there is on television," says Marshall. "But once we get their attention, we deliver the message." The eighth-grader who best grasped the message during Kick Start's inaugural television season received the grand prize: A $10,000 college scholarship.

The airwaves and cyberspace are two tools that Lumina, its partners and agents of change in programs across the country are using to get young people on the road to college. Just as often, the tools have been low-tech, and the agents have been – as Susan Pollack puts it – "on the ground" or in the trenches. Some have been there for years.